Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva

Description

Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva Classics is the thirty-eighth and final studio album by American recording artist Aretha Franklin and was released on October 17, 2014. It features ten covers of songs made famous by female recording artists.

This was Aretha’s first recording for RCA Records, her first studio album to be released under a major label in 11 years (since the release of her 2003 studio album, So Damn Happy), and her first album since 1998 to be executive produced by Clive Davis, her boss at Arista Records, which has since folded into RCA. It is also her last studio album of entirely original recordings created prior to her death, as the subsequent 2017 album A Brand New Me features vintage vocal performances from the 1960s and 1970s paired with newer orchestral arrangements.

Clive Davis called the album “purely and simply sensational” and said of Aretha Franklin, “She’s on fire and vocally in absolutely peak form. What a thrill to see this peerless artist still showing the way, still sending shivers up your spine, still demonstrating that all contemporary music needs right now is the voice. What a voice.” Production on the album includes R&B producers Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds and Harvey Mason, Jr., hip-hop musician André 3000, and house producers Terry Hunter and Eric Kupper among others.